Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers Blog

Common Business Website Problems

Just having a website doesn’t cut it anymore. Those days have been long gone! A website is often the face of the business and the first place that an individual interacts with a business, whether it’s a B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer) environment. Despite the fact that the first impression of a business is made through the website, there are common business website problems that are constantly occurring.

It would be great if you could have a perfect business website…one that got a lot of traffic, generated tons of leads, earned a bunch of customers, etc. I agree, it would be great for you to have the perfect website, but before that can even be a thought you must overcome the most common business website problems first! Here they are:

The Content On the Website is Lame

Content is important for many reasons, but one area that businesses often fail is actually providing the content the visitor is looking for or leading the website visitor to outdated content. This is a big frustration for website visitors. It is likely that they are on the website to find information about something or educate themselves about something. A lack of content, pushy/sales focused content, or old inaccurate content will require the visitor goes somewhere else to find their answer.

The Website is Incomplete

This is something that happens all too often. A business will create pages on the website expecting to fill the content in later. In the place of content they say “Coming soon”. The only problem is that soon never happens. Don’t fool yourself thinking that if you couldn’t create the content before the website was launched that it will happen magically down the road.

The Website Loads Too Slow

As website users, we’re spoiled. We don’t want to wait for anything to load, so even seconds count. Every second the website visitor has to wait, the greater likelihood that they will abandon the site and look elsewhere. How quickly your website loads will also impact your SEO (search engine optimization). If it loads too slow you’ll hurt your search engine rankings, in turn you’ll see traffic declines.

Poor Website Design

Whether you want to believe it or not, the design of your website matters. If your website visitor sees your website as unprofessional, sloppy, etc. that will also reflect on how they perceive the business. If it’s not already, at some point your website will become your primary marketing tool…take pride in how it looks!

The Website is Not Mobile Friendly

Mobile usage growth is continuing to increase with no decline in the future. Don’t kid yourself thinking that nobody views your site on a mobile or tablet device, they do. If the website is not mobile friendly you aren’t doing the visitor any favors and it is likely they will leave do to poor usability. In most cases your website should use responsive design to make it mobile friendly.

No Conversion Opportunities

As a business it’s likely that you want more leads, sales, and revenue, right? Well if there is no way to capture leads on your website or no reason for a visitor to convert to a lead you are treading water. A business website should have an offer that is conversion worthy, visitors should be directed there through CTAs, and taken to landing page that helps complete that conversion. If you’re failing here, it is time to consider a full inbound marketing strategy.

A Lack of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you build it they will come is not how a website works. To have a successful business website you must be attracting more “strangers”, not just the people that already know you. These “strangers” will find you via search engines, but not if you aren’t ranking in the search engines for related searches. There are many factors that affect the SEO health of your site such as how it was built, the content, the important on-page SEO elements, who links to you, really too many to cover in this post. If you haven’t evaluated your SEO or have never even implemented SEO tactics, now is the time!

Is Your Business Website Subject to One of These Common Problems?

Don’t sit there and let it happen. Now is the time to address the problems, they are costing you business. If you aren’t sure of the problems, find out!

As a manufacturer, you know that trade shows are an important facet of getting the word out about your business and making connections with potential clients. We've compiled this guide of best trade show tips to help you stand out, maximize leads and traffic, save time with technology/tools, and calculate your ultimate trade show ROI.